


An Avatar of Great Purpose

by dracofire87



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Gen, Kayfabe Compliant, Realization, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 18:24:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5836078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracofire87/pseuds/dracofire87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sami Zayn is back from his injury. Kevin Owens isn't sure how he feels about this. Neither is Sami. One thing's for certain--with Kevin's star on the ascendant, Sami has choices to make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Avatar of Great Purpose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mithen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/gifts).



Kevin sees the pictures while he’s backstage, courtesy of some drooling idiot on Twitter with no spelling skills. He’s about to delete the message and block the moron who sent it, when the thumbnail preview catches his eye, and he taps the link in spite of himself.

He stops dead in the middle of the hallway, phone trembling in his fingers.

_ Sami _ .

Sami, with a shaved head and still wearing those ridiculous pants. Sami grinning fiercely as the crowds in England practically riot around him. Sami hugging that rat-bastard Balor after a match. He looks sharp and aggressive, energy radiating from him even in a still photo.

_ Sami’s back _ .

For a moment, he can feel Sami’s body under his hands again, that beautiful, languid moment before he sent Sami smashing to the ground for the final time at Takeover. Can see Sami sprawled beneath him, deliciously broken at his hands.

_ Sami’s  _ back.

Kevin catches himself smiling,  _ giggling _ . His heart is pounding in his chest, his stomach twisted like it was the first time he stepped out in front of a crowd, into the ring.

He saves the pictures, blocks the mouth-breather, and puts his phone back in his pocket. He starts back down the corridor, a bounce in his step, whistling softly,  _ olé olé olé... _

_ Oh, Sami. Come back to me. I’ll be ready for you. We’re going to have so much fun... _

 

~*~

 

Two thousand miles away, Sami Zayn sits in his apartment in Florida, eyes fixed on his television screen. He watches in silence as Kevin Owens powerbombs Dean Ambrose through the Spanish announcer’s table.

_ He knows _ .

Sami’s not sure that anyone else would notice the difference. But no one else had ever spent so much time with Kevin, fighting beside him, fighting against him. He’s watched every one of Kevin’s matches since he made the main roster. After Kevin had lost the Intercontinental title, Sami had watched his energy ebb away, watched him grow sloppy, listless. But now…

Something twists in Sami’s gut, a butterfly roll out of nowhere. On screen, Kevin is surveying Dean Ambrose’s limp body with a leering satisfaction, the perverse enjoyment that he hasn’t displayed for anyone since...

...since Sami himself.

_ He shows off for you,  _ says the quiet voice in the back of his head, him-yet-not-him, the one that speaks in a Spanish accent.  _ He wants you to know what is waiting for you. He wants your battle to begin again. _

Sami catches himself leaning towards the screen, catches himself feeling vaguely disappointed as the screen flashes from Kevin’s face to a commercial break. He forces himself to lean back, to breathe, to ignore the weight in his chest that pulls him towards Kevin, always towards Kevin.

_ They don’t know how to fight him _ , he thinks. Kevin wasn’t just another competitor, not when he was like this. He was a force of nature, an avatar of rage and violence. Against that, any mere fighter, even one as good as Dean Ambrose, was nothing but so much distraction for Kevin. Even if you delayed him, beat him, drove him off, all it did was make him hungrier. Every little humiliation just pissed him off more. It fed the fire, it didn’t douse it.

To beat him, you had to become  _ like _ him, something more than just a fighter. He’d done it once before--taken a simple mask and made it an avatar of struggle and redemption, of endurance and virtue. They’d fought like titans. Sami had come out on top, finally, leaving Kevin broken and sobbing in the ring while the crowd sang El Generico’s praises. 

But the mask was gone now. He’d given it up, the price he’d paid to make it to the big leagues. And without it, Kevin had beaten him easily, left him sprawled and broken on the floor. By the time he had realized what he had to do, by the time he’d tried to make himself something  _ more,  _ something better, it had been too late.

His shoulder throbbed in sudden pain, and he pressed his hand against it, fingers tracing the thin, raised scars from his surgery.

Now Kevin was on the main roster. And Sami? Sami was just now getting his feet back under him in NXT. Sami was still dealing with a shoulder that ached every morning, and worse when it rained. He was tired, and weak, and he  _ hurt _ with the wounds that Kevin gave him.

He wanted to rest, he wanted to  _ heal _ . He’d fought so hard, for so long.

_ And who else can stop him? _ said the him-that-was-not-him.  _ He will come for you. And if he cannot have you, he will come for others. You are one side of his coin, and without you, there will be no balance, no safety. No glory. Just violence, and pain, and the madness of the beast. _

_ There must be a hero, to fight the monsters,  _ it said.  _ Darkness must have light. _

“He beat me before,” he replies, to the empty silence of his apartment. “He’ll beat me again.”

_ And yet you are still here. You are still fighting.  _

“He’ll hurt me again!”

_ And who would you have him hurt, instead of you? _

“I don’t have the mask, I don’t have what it takes! I don’t know how to do that again. I don’t know how to become that again.”

_ It was never just about the mask. Have you forgotten? It was never just about  _ you _. Do you remember? _

Sami’s ears fill with the sound of chanting, loud and raucous, joyous and exultant. He can see them in his mind, thousands of people crying out for him, celebrating with him in victory, mourning with him in defeat.

_ Olé, olé olé olé,  _  goes the chant, swelling until he can hardly bear it.  _ Olé olé, olé olé olé olé!  _ It’s a blessing and a hymn, a benediction and a shout for joy all at the same time. He remembers lifting up a golden belt above his head as that chant rose around him, ascendant and invincible--remembers how it filled him like fire. 

How it was so much more than he could have ever been alone.

He understands.

Silence falls again, but it’s no longer empty. It’s expectant, waiting.

“Alright,” he says, softly. “I’ll do it.”

 

~*~

 

Sami finds  _ him, _ as it turns out.

Kevin’s beating the shit out of Dolph Ziggler (again, yawn) at a Smackdown taping in D.C. when he hears the crowd explode, a roar that makes his ears hurt and the ring shake. He spins, ready to duck a punch or a clothesline from Ambrose, when a size thirteen boot catches him in the side of the head and turns his world to stars.

_ I know that foot _ \-- His thoughts come in stuttering flashes, consciousness threatening to slip away from a white-knuckled grasp. He flails up from his knees-- _ when did I fall down?  _ \--swinging wildly, and connects with nothing but air. A powerful arm hooks around his body, lifts him up, and the world spins viciously around him.

_ Oh fuck. _

He hits the mat hard, barely able to throw out an arm to cushion the blow at all, and for a moment his world goes black. Except it must be more than a moment, because when he blinks he’s flat on his back, with someone standing over him, looking down at him.

For a heartbeat’s length he sees a black mask edged in crimson, hanging above him, its eyes turned into bottomless pits by the harsh backlighting of the overhead spots. Terror stabs through him, flooding his belly with ice.

_ No, it can’t be him--he’s gone, he has to be--Sami killed him, Sami took his place-- _

Kevin’s head swims, black stars dancing at the edge of his vision, and he realizes that he’s forgetting to breathe. He heaves in air, vision clearing as oxygen rushes back to his brain. The terrible mask seems to melt away, replaced by a face that Kevin knows almost as well as his own.

Sami is standing over him, head and shoulders limned in golden fire from the halogen bulbs overhead. He looks lean and hard, and somehow more... _ Sami _ than before.

_ Distilled, _ he thinks, irrationally pleased with himself.  _ Reduced to his essentials by heat and pressure. Possibly “forged.” _

Kevin has never seen anything so beautiful, than this man who looks like the wrath of God made manifest.

Sami’s eyes find his, and he catches himself trembling under the weight of that dark, intense gaze. There’s no hesitation in that shadowed face. No anger, no reluctance. Just a  _ purpose _ , pure and implacable, paired with a fierce, exultant joy.

_ I’m ready,  _ Sami’s eyes say.  _ I’m not afraid of you anymore. _

Something in Kevin quails away, wanting to hide from that terrible regard. Something else cries out in joy and triumph, for his beloved enemy, so long away. He’s not sure he can beat this man, this new Sami. He’s not sure he cares.

He realizes that until this moment, he has never loved or hated Sami Zayn more. 

Sami turns and walks away, leaving Kevin alone on the mat, light-blind without Sami’s shadow to hide him. As he squeezes his eyes shut against the glare, the noise of the crowd rises around him, into a single voice shouting at the top of its lungs.

_ “Olé, olé olé olé…” _

Kevin begins to laugh, shaking with a sick kind of pleasure, even as he presses his hands to his mouth to try and stifle it.

_ Oh, Sami. My brilliant, beautiful Sami... _

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to Mithen for her beta reading and general inspiration! This work draws heavily from her Sami/Kevin fics, which you absolutely should read if you like wonderful wrestling fics.
> 
> Also, I swear this was written before the Royal Rumble. Makes me feel a bit prescient, really...


End file.
